CFR Pushes Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)

“Senate Should Move Quickly to Join Convention on Law of the Sea,” says the heading of a May 4 press release from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). As noted here in April, it was to be expected that the usual lobbyists for world government would exploit the recent increase in Somali pirate activity to push for Senate ratification of the UN Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). And, as we pointed out here and here in February, the campaign to provide the United Nations with vast new legislative, judicial, and executive powers — including the power to tax all earthlings, Americans not excepted — is being led by the CFR, which has been in the forefront of this and other “global governance” power grabs.

According to the CFR press release:

An upswing in piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia, the rise of new naval powers such as China and India, and a rapidly melting polar ice cap that is opening the Arctic to international shipping and resource extraction are but a “few of the pressing issues that give mounting urgency for the United States to join the convention,” says CFR Fellow for Ocean Governance Scott G. Borgerson in a new Council Special Report.

The press release goes on to state:

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea created the overarching governance framework for nearly three-quarters of the earth's surface and what lies above and beneath it and has been signed and ratified by 156 countries and the European Community, but not the United States. The treaty has languished in the Senate without legislative action due to a filibuster threat from a small but vocal opposition who believe that the world's most powerful navy does not need to sign on to this international agreement. It is time to have a full Senate hearing on the treaty, maintains Borgerson, because officially joining the convention will not only measurably benefit U.S. national security, but is also in the country's economic and environmental interests as well.

The press release also announced the release of the CFR’s new report, The National Interest and the Law of the Sea, which asserts that “joining the convention will allow the United States to extend U.S. sovereignty over as much as one million square kilometers of additional ocean, an area half the size of the Louisiana Purchase.” To say this claim is disingenuous is a gross understatement; it is completely fraudulent. It is like the con-man who says: “Just sign over the title to your property to me and you have my word you’ll be able to do whatever you want on your property. And, you have my word that you’ll be able to graze your cattle on my adjoining acres for as long as you want — for free.” Of course, once you sign over the title, you are at his mercy, and he can toss you out, promises notwithstanding. Far from enhancing U.S. sovereignty, LOST is one of the most radical, far-reaching, and revolutionary attacks on national sovereignty ever devised. We stand to gain nothing from it that can’t be gained by other traditional diplomatic means, but what we stand to lose is so enormous as to be incalculable.

LOST puts virtually the entire earth under the authority of the UN's Division of Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS). As we have reported previously:

Please note that DOALOS, the UN agency in charge of administering LOST, claims the convention covers "all ocean space," including everything on, in, under, and above the oceans. Note also the heavy use of the adjective "all," as in "all uses," "all resources," "all activities." But wait; as we shall see, the claims go even far beyond this to include global regulations that will override domestic laws covering not only coastal waters and shorelines, but also human activities in rivers and inland waterways, and land-based activities that may be claimed — no matter how far-fetched — to be harming the marine environment.

The Council on Foreign Relations, the private, New York City-based organization leading the charge for LOST ratification, has never been a friend of the U.S. Constitution or American independence and national sovereignty. To the contrary, the organization and its members have been the most implacable enemies of national sovereignty, as attested by Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy. Admiral Ward was himself a CFR member for over a decade and a half, before becoming one of its chief critics. It finally became apparent to Ward, that the unalterable goal of the CFR is the "submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government." He noted that "this lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership."

President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton are not formal CFR members, but all three have been closely associated with the organization (speaking at CFR programs and/or writing for the CFR journal, Foreign Affairs), and all three have supported ratifying LOST while serving in the Senate.

Americans must let their senators know in no uncertain terms that LOST was unacceptable in 1982 and nothing has changed to make it acceptable now.

Click here to send an email (updated as of May 18, 2012) to your senators in strong opposition to the ratification of the LOST treaty.

Click here for updated information as of May 18, 2012, regarding Senator Kerry's plans for a hearing on the LOST Treaty on May 23, 2012, and his further plans to hold a vote on the ratification of the LOST treaty in 2012, possibly as early as June.

For more information on the UN Law of the Sea Treaty, see these articles:

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